Perhaps a warning..
My daughter lives in the suburbs of Vancouver, her house is at the bottom of a fairly steep hill, on top of this hill is a large apartment complex roughly 500 units with numerous houses around the apartment complex, she has 2 houses further down from her, apparently the sewer line runs down hill as the lower three houses are connected.
Thursday morning I received a call from her complaining she can smell something like a sewer smell, that afternoon her neighbor 2 houses down came to the daughters house complaining that the sewer or something was coming into her bathtub, I gone to my daughters around 11:30 12:00 thursday evening (a frantic call) she was starting to have the same issue, the neighbor from two houses down came running over while I was there. Since we was unable to call anyone at the city/county I had them call the fire department (figured they knew who to contact)
In the meantime..
I sent them to the local 24hr grocery store to purchase the largest balloons they carried, we pulled the p-trap from all the sinks, inflated the balloons (using air compressor) in the lines, sealed the open end with duck tape, we emptied the toilet bowl of water, inserted a balloon in the siphon part of the toilet and inflated it and covered the top of the bowl with cellophane and duck taped, we pulled the tub screen out and used the balloon in the drain, duck taped the hole and used a brick on top, so far it has kept the smell out. The county has been working on the line and as of this morning sewer was still down.
Until this situation it slipped my mind that the drains and toilet would need to be plugged not just to keep the smell out but to keep the sewer from backing into the drains in the house in a shtf situation in a city setting!
My daughter lives in the suburbs of Vancouver, her house is at the bottom of a fairly steep hill, on top of this hill is a large apartment complex roughly 500 units with numerous houses around the apartment complex, she has 2 houses further down from her, apparently the sewer line runs down hill as the lower three houses are connected.
Thursday morning I received a call from her complaining she can smell something like a sewer smell, that afternoon her neighbor 2 houses down came to the daughters house complaining that the sewer or something was coming into her bathtub, I gone to my daughters around 11:30 12:00 thursday evening (a frantic call) she was starting to have the same issue, the neighbor from two houses down came running over while I was there. Since we was unable to call anyone at the city/county I had them call the fire department (figured they knew who to contact)
In the meantime..
I sent them to the local 24hr grocery store to purchase the largest balloons they carried, we pulled the p-trap from all the sinks, inflated the balloons (using air compressor) in the lines, sealed the open end with duck tape, we emptied the toilet bowl of water, inserted a balloon in the siphon part of the toilet and inflated it and covered the top of the bowl with cellophane and duck taped, we pulled the tub screen out and used the balloon in the drain, duck taped the hole and used a brick on top, so far it has kept the smell out. The county has been working on the line and as of this morning sewer was still down.
Until this situation it slipped my mind that the drains and toilet would need to be plugged not just to keep the smell out but to keep the sewer from backing into the drains in the house in a shtf situation in a city setting!
